dissonance
by lady lutka
Summary: He will often come to her, heavy steps and heady breath, jasmine and hemlock lingering on his lips. They will make empty percussion of the cold bars separating them — he strikes every dissonance, she will desperately try to lure him in. —natsu&lucy / experimental endlu


**notes:**

this is an experimental endlu fic because it's what all my faves are doing and i felt like i was missing out on something great.

* * *

ℒund / **blkbrd**

the nbhd / **$TING**

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 _i'm losing my soul  
_ _my demons, they grow_

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She pictures his face only in dreams:

Bronzed skin, like butter warmed with a spoonful of golden syrup. Shadow-like stubble, fair, lining a strong jaw and squared chin. Dawny freckles dusted over a thrice-broken nose sparingly; so faint and small, one wouldn't know of their existence.

She knew.

She also knew that his lips tasted like ash and nightshade despite the light words he would whisper into her ear—

the claws that trailed down her neck,

fanged grins, scarlet-choked sins.

Now she sits in his dungeon, imagining the granite were his lap and the shadowed sun outside the him from before he complied to his brother's every whim.

" _Luce_ ," he would drawl on lazy Sundays. " _Let's go on an adventure!_ "

Now he growls and hisses and spits, every bit the demon she refused to believe in.

He will often come to her, heavy steps and heady breath, jasmine and hemlock lingering on his lips. They will make empty percussion of the cold bars separating them—he strikes every _dissonance_ , she will desperately try to lure him in.

"Let me go."

"No."

She hates his hands and what they have done.

She hates that she still clings to his rotten love.

As he retreats, she entertains the thought of dissolving the space between them. Will he still call her his sweet thing, lay kisses upon a supple thigh? Will she still hide wide grins between exasperated sighs?

Will they make love, or will they forge malevolence? Is he now wicked, a twisted and vile reproduction of time and premise? Or is he still sweet and strong, grin larger than the valleys and oceans they once traversed?

Golden sunlight would flicker through his thick, honeyed lashes. The dawn frost planted its seed into his chest, and his arms bound her tighter. Dew would collect in the gorges between his furrowed brows, caught in a dream she hoped she starred in most vivaciously, like the women from those magazines who had no fears or qualms. They would forage breakfast, kiss by the dying fire and profess their love quietly; less the deer and birds overhear and become envious of their affections.

His laugh could draw sickness from the afflicted, cleanse decay and purge the wicked. A man of a thousand tales was he, and yet the most tragic was the one he felt worthy only of himself.

So she sits and waits, wonders when he will admit their big adventures were all a mistake.

* * *

With his absence, she turns to dreaming.

Perhaps if she stays lucid for long enough, her mind will forget where his brother sent him — to Purgatory, a place dangerous even for the demons that forged it.

She doesn't want to think of his eyes and his fists, and the souls he must be damning, for her Natsu was always a man of action and loyalty. Would he have gone to hell for her in a previous life? Without a thought, he would. She could ask for a gift from those shadowed trenches and he would find one, perhaps a gloom blossom to rest behind her ear or a piece of volcanic husk, veined with lacrima and his own hellfire.

But that was a past life, where her smile could count for something and her eyes reflected all the star's light.

A flash.

She hides her face from it, feels the tears prickling like acid.

" _Lucy, let me in."_

"No," she says, reiterates it with a plea.

Watching Loke form is alike to watching a star fall in reverse. Star dust collects into one swirling inferno of gold and brass, the ruby on his ring peeking through the holy swarm. And then he steps through the threshold of her prison, and she wants to cry from the injustice of it.

"Hey," he whispers and gathers her in warm arms. She is coaxed like a child, and for once the chains snagging on the uneven stone of her cage grate on her ears. "What has he done to you?"

She doesn't spare him her voice, hates even seeing herself cry. How pathetic must the heavens see her now?

Leo is a bundle of rage and despair as he strokes her bare shoulders, flinches against the raw skin beneath his fingertips. His honeyed scent no longer makes her stomach pine, filling that void are her own choked tears.

"I hate this," he whispers, and she wraps her hands around his own to quieten the shaking.

"It's not for long," she promises, ignores the emptiness of it.

Loke refuses to meet her eye.

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 _if you were human, if you were who i assumed you were  
you wouldn't have done this_

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His chest burns.

This is not uncommon — when you've lived as long as he the sun will begin to mistake you for its resting place, and he will choke on flames and tinder while the living pull back their sheets and have their dreams.

His hands ache.

This also is uncommon — when you've wrung as many necks, snapped as many arms, ripped as many throats out as he the knuckles will meld together, the still-human part of him protesting the gore. But that demon will burn and scream, the rage that there was never enough filling every crevice of his being, fuelling the need to _tear_

 _rip_

 _gouge._

 _Golden light flickers through heady, kohl-lined lashes. Peach lips, pink tips._

The smile is wicked, teeth gleaming, chest buzzing and _tearing_. The lowly demons shy away, the souls screech as he feasts. He leaves a massacre in his wake, blood-soaked walls and ichor-coated floor.

The demon paces and paces, the dragon roars and _fucking screams_.

 _What have you done what have you done, Gods what have you done_.

A trail of bite marks, connect the weeping sites to spell _SWEET DEATH MY LOVE._ The succubus in his chamber keens something filthy, the angel in his prison weeps _come back to me_.

The human is there, fights against him with teeth and nails, yells creative obscenities. You loved her once, love her again, _you are not me_. But oh, how the human trembles, flinches away from each and every demonic sin.

"You let go," he reminds, voice thick with the blood of others. "You thought the demon could be controlled."

And now he would reject the world, burn every bridge he had ever made — wreak enough havoc to compensate for the four centuries he had been so unjustly locked away.

* * *

His brother is hardly impressed when he returns from the bottomless pits of Hell. Cruel eyes, upturned lips. _As expected of my greatest creation_ is the extent of his appraisal, and the demon lurking behind his eyes rears. He turns his back before Zeref can call him _my brother_ or _Natsu_.

"Wait."

He stills, the air thick with ruin and shade.

"That girl summoned a Spirit. I expect you to deal with it."

His answer is easy. "It will be done."

He makes it a foot away from the door when Zeref speaks again, and the magic in the air presses into his back, his neck, fights its way into his knees so he will kneel.

"I will not tolerate these… incidents for much longer. You can either send her to Kyoka or send her to her death. It is your choice."

The human resumes his screaming. Don't you fucking touch her, _she is a child of heaven_ , why can't you love her. Zeref flicks his wrist and then he is tumbling down stone steps, catching knees on tapestries and elbows lashing at the shadow engulfing him. It deposits him at his chamber door and slithers into the cracks in the stone above his head.

He can smell blood and dust, honey and rust. Then there's her.

Starfire. Buttercups and violets, rue. Night shade and dew.

"You're back," she says, voice much like silk.

There is something wicked in his chest, something that twists and grips at his stuttering heart—

a sickness, a mindless rot that seeps into his very bones, brittle as they are with the absence of her sun.

"You summoned a spirit," he says instead and stalks closer, close enough until the chill of her prison brushes against his skin and seeps in, deep deep down where there is no sin.

She stays in her corner, all white linen and luminescent skin. He ignores the fact that he can almost see through her. "You know I can't stop them," she whispers. "You _know_ that I won't order them to."

"That's not good enough."

"What would you have me do, then?"

What would he have her do? What could possibly be said, demand? What oaths could he bind her to?

"Zeref would have me kill you."

"Would you?" she fires back and creeps that bit closer, like they weren't so alien to each other. Like they both still spoke in tongues.

No. "Yes."

"I don't believe that."

"I don't care about what you believe in."

But still he enters her prison with heavy steps, watches her square frail shoulders and take a deep breath. To ground herself, or remember his scent — what little remained?

"How was Purgatory?"

The demon grins. "I've yet to leave."

Her gaze lowers to his feet, encased in heavy boots and surely still covered in his treachery. She drags a dampened cloth over them, wrings it out with her dry hands and hisses when the inky blood burns her.

"What are you doing?"

She looks at him incredulously, showing not an ounce of fear at his growl. "How would you feel if I walked through your home in filthy boots?"

The human part, that fragile part, recoils. _This isn't her home this isn't her home let her go you bastard._ She fled her father's prison only to creep into his. Yet she breathes life into the cracked stone walls, fills the small space with enough radiance that he can see it from his bed and from beneath the door frame. It casts its beam across his face, steadfast against his presence.

Her chain drags over the stone floor as she moves closer, drags the cloth across the contours of his face. It comes away sullied and she rinses it once again, this time lathing the grime from his split knuckles. Her brow furrows at the sight.

"Natsu, you can't keep doing this."

"Use my correct name."

She won't out of some intricate form of denial, like pretending her version of him was still somehow there would make everything _okay_. It is the highest level of self-deprecation he has ever seen; the refusal of reality.

"All better," she hums, and that fist around his heart twists and _rips_. How many times had those lips uttered those words against his own?

He rises without a word, and something compels him to her wrist. The chain link crumbles beneath his touch and her gasp fills the entire room, rises to the ceiling and rests there, like all the _could have been's_ and _what if's_.

The door swings _openclose_ in his wake, and he can hear her pull herself over the floor in disbelief. She does not dare utter a single word, perhaps from fear of waking. Flighty are her feet when she stands and stumbles, catching herself on the iron of her birdcage.

His door slamming shut sounds like a gunshot in the quiet, and he can feel her startle, the part of her that seeped into the cold walls almost shuddering. He barely hears her whisper:

"You're still in there, aren't you?"

His answer is silence.

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 _they drag me below  
_ _but nobody knows  
_ _when they take control_


End file.
